


the rig

by ssstrychnine



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Food Service, F/M, Food Trucks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2017-07-01
Packaged: 2018-11-21 19:08:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11363754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssstrychnine/pseuds/ssstrychnine
Summary: furiosa runs a food truck called the rig, max's truck and his impossibly delicious donuts are an unwelcome edition on her turf





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i started this a long time ago on tumblr. i hope to finish it soon.

Furiosa starts The Rig because she’d grown up surrounded by aunts and salads and because The Green Place had been her mother’s vegan restaurant and because she's always hated kale and alfalfa sprouts and goji berries, and she’d been making her own burgers since she was old enough to work the grill. Her mother is dead and her aunts have The Green Place now and Furiosa wants something else.

The truck comes from the aunts, a rusted, dying thing; they think she needs distracting, and she agrees. She fixes it up herself, collecting scars and staining her fingers with rust and glaring at the monstrous grill she installs until it gives up and starts working. It’s The Rig for her mother, and for her aunts. They’d driven long-haul tankers, all of them, before retiring to kale smoothies and quinoa.

She sells burgers with homemade pickles, and thick-cut fries in paper cones, and pulled pork in brioche, and onion rings, and milkshakes. She sells everything her mother would have hated, everything her mother would have laughed at. And something strikes true with people, and in just a few months, she’s swamped. She hires Angharad first, to take orders, and make shakes. She hires Capable because Angharad screams at anyone who leers, or winks, or licks his lips, which is fine except she doesn't take their money first. Dag comes next, filling the gap that Angharad and Capable leave when Furiosa gives them the second truck across town. Then Toast, because customers actually seem to miss Angharad yelling at them, and Toast has a the mouth of a sailor. Cheedo is the last, and she never yells, and she always smiles, and she gives stickers to children, and she pours an ice cream float into the lap of a man who grabs Dag’s arm when she doesn’t respond to his cat calls.

They develop a reputation as spiky, and tough, and lovely as spun sugar, and vicious as needles. Furiosa’s truck dominates three whole blocks downtown, and Angharad and Capable’s truck is a student haven on the edges of the main university campus. Every review they get mentions Furiosa’s pickles, and Toast’s sriracha wings, and the feminist zines Capable gives out with meals. They get a liquor licence and Dag’s cocktails are famous for looking disgusting and tasting delicious. When _Pursuit Special_ opens across the road from Furiosa’s spot, everything goes a bit wrong.

Pursuit Special is black, and ugly, and it also serves burgers. And steak, perfectly cooked, and coleslaw that is somehow not terrible, and plump, sugar coated donuts, filled with creme patisseier. This truck is run by one person, a man who never seems to speak, who takes orders with a grunt, who gets food out so quickly Furiosa is convinced he has someone hiding in his ovens. Her crowds loyalty wavers. Her crowds think his donuts are perfect, and his aioli is to die for, and his sweet potato fries are _heavenly_. Furiosa hates him, and she hates the Pursuit Special, and she especially hates the donuts she has Angharad buy her, because he can’t possible recognise her.

It takes her almost three months to crack. Three months of Angharad teasing at her, and Cheedo trying out different donut recipes, and Dag naming cocktails things like _Furiosa’s wrath_. She goes to the Pursuit Special because he needs to know that this is her patch, and he is stealing customers who don’t know any better. (She goes to the Pursuit Special because Angharad won’t get her donuts anymore and she is sure they’re laced with crack or something because she _needs_ them).

“What do you want,” she greets him, and he blinks at her, and he cocks his head to one side, and everything smells of _cinnamon_.

“I don’t…” he starts, and then he licks his lips. “I don’t know.”

“You can’t stay here.”

“Oh.”

“I’ve been here almost a year now. This place is mine.”

“There’s room for two.”

“There’s….there is not.”

“What do you coat your onion rings in?”

“What do I-what?”

“What do you coat your onion rings in?” he repeats patiently.

“I…I’m not telling you that,” she says, folding her arms across her chest, tilting her chin.

“Right,” he sighs, and he closes his eyes for a moment. “Panko crumbs?”

“Are your donuts laced with drugs?” she asks instead of answering.

He smiles. He licks his lips again (Furiosa _stares_ ). He turns away from her, and messes around with something for a few moments, and turns back with a white bakery box.

“For you, and your girls,” he says. “A new filling. I’m thinking I might stop with the grill, baking only.”

Furiosa doesn’t say anything, but she takes the box, and she turns her back on him, and she strides across to her truck with her shoulders high. Baking would work, she thinks, The Rig _is_ lacking in dessert.

The donuts are filled with caramel and sprinkled with rock salt, and Furiosa takes one bite and decides that maybe she’ll let him stay after all.


	2. Chapter 2

Furiosa hires Angharad because she answers every question like she’s fighting with it. This girl with a mesh of scars high across her cheekbone, and her forehead, and disappearing into her hairline. This girl with a face like an angel and barely contained rage under her skin. Furiosa remembers being that young, and that angry, and she hires her on the spot.

Angharad knows Capable, who knows Dag, who knows Toast, and everyone knows Cheedo. They’re a family, those girls, and Furiosa isn’t quite a part of it, but she’s there for them all the same. Cheedo calls her once, when she gets stuck on the edges of the city after dark. Toast makes her teach all of them zippo lighter tricks. Dag brings her bunches of wild flowers. Furiosa wonders where Angharad had seen the for hire notice, whether she saw it pinned to the noticeboard in the woman’s shelter downtown, but she doesn’t ask.

The Rig thrives, and the girls thrive, and Furiosa doesn’t think she is the thriving sort, but she might be smiling more.

They form an uneasy alliance with Pursuit Special, and he is flipping burgers still so Furiosa can’t really trust him, but he’s stopped making fries. It’s not like his burgers are better than hers, she reasons, so she lets it slide.The donuts he brings over every evening, without a word, are nothing to do with it. Furiosa sending Cheedo over to him with onion rings at lunch has nothing to do with it either. She comes back with sugar crystals at the corners of her mouth. Names are not exchanged.

It is two weeks into this almost-truce, and it’s twilight, and Furiosa is wiping the bench down and refusing to think that Pursuit Special is late with his donuts, when Angharad visits, tying her hair in knots. She is feverishly angry, a whirling dervish, and she is pulling Capable after her by the wrist. Furiosa puts her cloth away. Dag knocks over a box of plastic cutlery in her haste to boil the water jug. Cheedo tucks her hair behind her ears and adopts her most understanding expression.

“Something’s happened,” says Capable, when Angharad is too keyed up to speak.

“I’ll fight him,” says Toast, cracking her knuckles.

“It’s something else.”

“There’s a new truck,” Angharad snaps, spitting the words out and slumping into one of chairs set up outside the truck. Capable sits down next to her. “He’s poisoning the sauces.”

“He’s not poisoning the sauces,” Capable murmurs.

“Not _yet_.”

Furiosa and the others leave the truck. They take their places around the table. Dag has the kettle, and the chamomile tea. Cheedo gently pulls Angharad’s hair out of it’s knots, and braids it down her back, long and golden. Toast tucks her knees under her chin. Capable’s eyes never leave Angharad’s face.

“Explain this to me properly,” Furiosa tells Angharad, who rolls her eyes, who presses her lips together, who calms down under Cheedo’s touch and Capable’s gaze.

“A new truck has opened across from us,” she says, her voice almost level. “It looks like a hospital on wheels.”

“A giant silver fridge,” Capable adds.

“You could do surgery on the bench.”

“It’s called The _Gigahorse_.”

“That’s not a thing,” Dag mutters, and she pours tea for everyone.

“Anyway, they sell bottled water for six dollars,” Angharad sighs, fiddling with Cheedo’s braid.

There is a long silence. Furiosa looks into her mug of tea, and wonders how these girls got so wild, and where her donuts are, and what else Angharad has to say. When nothing else comes, she looks up.

“Their bottled water is expensive so…”

“They’re evil,” Angharad insists. “The guy who runs it wears military medals pinned to his apron. He looks at me.”

“I’ll _fight him_ ,” Toast repeats, looking murderous. “We’ll run them out.”

“If they charge that much for water, they’ll run themselves out,” Cheedo says, reasonably.

“You’ll be kicked off campus if you start fighting,” Furiosa says. “Don’t start anything.”

“Can I finish something if they _do_ poison our sauces?”  

“If they poison anything we’ll go to the police.”

“ _Boring_ Furiosa.”

“ _Necessary_ Angharad.”

They fall into silence again, and Angharad grumbles, and Capable soothes, and Dag smokes. The twilight turns to night, and Cheedo brings out candles to light their table because no one really wants to leave. They’d closed early because it was raining and no one was around, but it’s clear now, and stars gradually take the place of clouds. Furiosa thinks that she should burn anyone that looks at Angharad in a way she doesn’t want, but she knows she won’t. Toast challenges Capable to an arm wrestle, and blushes furiously when she loses.

Pursuit Special arrives to see Cheedo beat Dag, and Furiosa beat everyone (she is forbidden from using her prosthetic, though she is sure she’d lose if she did). He stands silently by the table, and waits for this to finish. He has a bakery box. Furiosa doesn’t look at him.

“You wanna go, donut guy?” Toast challenges, tilting her chin like she hadn’t lost to everyone but Dag.

Pursuit Special declines with a muffled noise and puts the box on the table.

“Cherry,” he says.

“Furiosa would beat you,” Toast continues, ignoring the box. (Angharad drags it into her lap and doles them out, her expression that of a ruler delegating).

“Mm,” says Pursuit Special, his eyes flicking to Furiosa, and away.

“You’re still making burgers,” Furiosa says, ignoring the donut when it’s placed in front of her.

“Gotta ease out of it,” he says, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Brownies next week.”

Cheedo makes an excited sort of squeak, and it might just pull a smile from the edges of his mouth, but Furiosa _isn’t looking at him_. She scowls at her donut. She pulls the corner off a napkin. She tries not to think about men with faces like that who _bake_. She thinks instead about the shadows behind his eyes, and the way his hands shake, and the way his eyes never stop moving. There is danger in him somewhere, and she will keep it at arm’s length.

“Well, goodnight,” she says.

He nods at her, and he gives a twist of his wrist, an almost-wave, to the girls, and he strides off into the darkness, and it swallows him up in an instant. Furiosa takes a bite of her donut and shuts her eyes at the disgustingly delicious taste of not-too-sweet-but- _perfect_ cherries.

“You’re a mess, Furiosa,” sniffs Angharad, and she gets to her feet, and the girls follow suit, and they disappear too, and Furiosa is left with sticky fingers, and melting candles, and stars.


	3. Chapter 3

His name is Max. Furiosa tries to cover her ears when Cheedo tells her this, but she tugs on her arms until she gives up. His name is Max. Not Pursuit Special or donut guy or that guy across the park who is skating on thin ice. His name is Max.

“That’s a dog’s name,” she says, and she busies herself with the burgers.

He’d started on brownies, as he said he would, and they are thick and dark and fudgey, with a little bite to the edges. Furiosa thinks she could put away a whole baking tray in one sitting, if the opportunity arose. Cheedo could put away more. The donuts don’t stop either, but the coleslaw goes. He’s just steak and baking after that and it’s close to being acceptable. Furiosa starts making a coleslaw that is almost as good as his was, and she only charges a buck to anyone who already has one of his steaks. He does the same with his donuts, a discount to anyone who has one of Furiosa’s burgers. It’s an unspoken arrangement. It’s just good business. She will never call him Max.

He comes to The Rig one night with a bakery box in hand. Furiosa is alone, her girls had been sent home early, covering yawns with their hands and carrying books under their arms. Last minute exam prep. She is wiping down the counter and checking ingredients and he comes up to her with his box and his silence. She doesn’t expect it and when she turns around to him with his elbows on the counter she shrieks and then slams hand across her mouth like that will take it back. He smiles.

“What do you want?”

“Nothing,” he says, all innocence.

“Walk louder,” she says, and she throws the cloth she’s holding into a bucket on the floor. “What do you want?”

“Nothing,” he repeats, and he opens the box.

Inside it is a lemon tart. It is glowing yellow and she can smell the lemon where she’s standing, sharp and sweet all at once, nothing like the lemon scent of the cleaner she uses. Fresh and clean and mouthwatering. Furiosa narrows her eyes.

“There’s no one here to eat that.”

“You’re here,” says _Pursuit Special_. “I’m here.”

“Two people can’t eat a whole tart.”

“Your girl Cheedo could eat this whole thing,” he retorts, the longest sentence she’s ever heard from him.

“My girl Cheedo isn’t human,” Furiosa mutters.

But she leaves the truck anyway. She closes it up and grabs her bag and he is still there even though she’d taken longer than she’d needed to. He has a dog’s name, she thinks. He is well trained, she thinks. There are still ghosts under her eyes, she thinks.

“Are you all shut up?” she asks, shoving her keys into her pocket. He nods. The bakery box is under his arm again. “Alright.”

They walk together to Furiosa’s car, a beat up thing, a dying thing, more hopeless than the truck had been before she’d shined it up. She doesn’t have the time to do the same to her car. It gets her places. It’s enough. There is a mess of Rig related things in the back seat and she is glad to see she hadn’t been wrong to assume it included cutlery. She grabs a pair of plastic forks and she hauls herself onto the hood of the car.

“Take a seat,” she tells him, and something flickers in his eyes, a shadow, a thought, but he does as she asks, and he places the bakery box between them.

They don’t eat the whole thing, only half. It is sweet and sour and the pastry is buttery and crisp and it’s as delicious as everything he makes is, but they still only eat half. They sit in silence. They are bathed in city lights. Dogs bark and car horns sound across rain slick streets. Furiosa wants to ask him why his hands shake. She wants to ask him why he bakes and why he brings them sweet things and what the shadows in his eyes are. She wants to ask him to stop cooking steaks entirely. Hers are better. She wants to, but she doesn’t. Eating lemon tart on the hood of a car seems to ask for silence, and they are both comfortable with it. It’s not the time for digging deep and opening wounds. Not yet.

“My name is Furiosa,” she tells him, though he’s probably picked that up already. He nods. He puts his fork down.

“I’m Max,” he says, and it really is all she is ready for, and she takes it, and they sit in silence until the stars are brighter than the street lights.

**Author's Note:**

> adding all my [tumblr prompts](http://oneangryshot.tumblr.com/tagged/fic%20masterpost) to ao3. this is currently unfinished but i have plans.


End file.
